Thames Valley MPs support push for integrated transport system
Release date: 17/01/2008
Thames Valley critical to UK economic success
Rail and road links to Heathrow are top priorities
Thames Valley MPs have vowed to support a major push for urgently needed improvements to the M4, and a new direct rail link from Reading, Maidenhead and Slough to Heathrow Airport.
The politicians met leaders from local councils and the region’s business community at the House of Commons, who told them that unless the issues that have blighted both public transport and the motorway are treated seriously by government, major employers may leave the area.
At least two major employers present at the meeting said when their leases ran out in five years time they will be looking carefully at renewal.
The Commons meeting was organised by the Thames Valley Economic Partnership, which wants the Heathrow Express extended from Heathrow’s Terminal 5 to Slough, thus providing a direct link with the Great Western main line.
TVEP argues that this extension could and should be built long before the CrossRail scheme - designed to provide additional services from central London to the airport -comes into service in the second half of the next decade.
"We need this now”, Shaun Whittaker, chief executive of TVEP, told the MPs. “Our members are spending huge amounts in taxis to get to the airport using over-congested roads, because although there are several rail links to London from Heathrow, there are none to the west.
"There are also a substantial proportion of the people who work at Heathrow who live in the Thames Valley, and have to drive there because there is no satisfactory alternative. The rail link we suggest would provide that. It would reduce the pressures on the M4 and the environment. This is not a high-cost scheme like Crossrail, but it is absolutely crucial to the economic success of the Thames Valley”.
TVEP also urged the government to accept immediately the recommendation of its own inspectors that improvements need to be made to the M4. It wants support for a feasibility study into increasing the capacity of the motorway between the M25 and Newbury.
Mr Whittaker said:”The M4 is the only spoke of the motorway system to the west of London that has only two lanes. At peak times it is already operating above it capacity. Lack of funds is not the issue – there are plenty of ways in which a public-private partnership could work to increase capacity, and solve a problem that is growing daily, where journey times are unpredictable and the congestion stressful for those who live and work in the Thames Valley”.
Tom Fanning, a senior executive of Macquarie Bank, which has funded road schemes worldwide, including the successful M6 toll road, attended the meeting, and said his organisation was prepared to consider proposals for solving the M4 problem.
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